Life is Movement

On impermanence, acceptance, and releasing control

“The only constant in life is change.” —Greek philosopher Heraclitus

Life is movement.

To be alive is to be in a state of constant change, fluidity, and responsiveness.

Movement is how the first cells divided and the first organisms grew. Movement is how evolution progressed. Movement is how humans develop over their lifespan.

Growth and movement is lifelong. The self is a process, not a product.

We move when we learn, when we change our minds, when we adapt to new circumstances. We move when we experience emotion. (The word emotion comes from the Latin movere which means “to move.”) Our most powerful experiences of flow, ecstasy, obsession, despair, grief, and rage are all temporary states.¹ Nothing lasts.

Lack of movement is death, not only physically, but emotionally and spiritually. Our brains and bodies are wired to perceive change, not constancy. We lose something when we get stagnant, when we get stuck, when we cling to old patterns and habits we have outgrown.²

Non-grasping

In Buddhist and contemplative traditions, impermanence is a fundamental truth. Nothing is fixed, and clinging to something that will change causes suffering. Non-grasping is the practice of not clinging, craving, or tightening around experiences. Non-grasping lets experience move through us.

“Hold the world lightly, as if in an open hand.” —Jack Kornfield

When we find sufficiency and contentment with what we have, we can better appreciate life in all its changing seasons.

Practicing mindfulness is how we learn non-grasping. Mindfulness trains us to be aware of our experience from moment to moment, allowing thoughts and sensations to arise and pass without holding on to them.

Life is change, and peace comes from moving with it.

Love

Love is movement with someone else. Love is a dance, co-created by the dancers, constantly changing. Learning about each other and falling in love is how we create the music. To keep the relationship going, we need to be intentional about continuing to move in sync. We need to continue learning about each other for as long as the relationship lasts, and not assume we already know everything there is to know about each other, because we are all constantly changing.

In love, we want to promise each other “forever.” But we can’t see the future. We can’t know that we will continue to grow in the same direction. We can’t predict changes in ourselves or the other. And a relationship doesn’t have to last forever to be meaningful, even life-changing.

When love is a form of grasping (“I need you to be this way” or “I’m afraid of losing you”), it starts to feel limited. It feels scarce. Loving in this way can limit our own and others’ growth. But when love arises from generosity rather than possession, it naturally becomes spacious and flexible. Generous love moves — it breathes, expands, shifts shape.

What can we do without assurances of “forever”? We can honor our truth right now. We can put in the work of love by accepting each other as messy and imperfect humans, and seeing each other fully for who we are instead of who we want each other to be. We can be committed to continuing to know and move with each other.

Love is “the work of mirroring and magnifying each other’s light³.” It’s “the will to nurture our own or another’s spiritual growth⁴.” It’s an active choice in addition to a feeling.

And if we need to move in different directions, love is not lost. Relationships may change shape, and feelings may evolve over time, but having deeply cared for someone leaves a mark on our hearts, and that imprint endures. Our hearts expand. Our capacity for love grows.

Fear

Many people (🙋🏻‍♀️) have a deep fear of change. We want comfortability, stability, predictability, certainty. We want forever. One of the scariest things to confront is the inevitable truth that everything is temporary. Including life itself.

We want to run from this truth. To avoid.⁵ Many people spend their whole lives denying it, distracting themselves: chasing pleasure, clinging to comfort, avoiding hardship and negative feelings.⁶ We long for stillness.

But to cope with this deepest, most primal fear, we must practice acceptance and surrendering control. We must practice remaining present with our experiences instead of being lost in ruminating about the past⁷ or worrying about the future.⁸ We must practice living with uncertainty.⁹ We must practice accepting that everything changes.

Fear tells us to stop moving, to hold our breath. But life pulls us forward anyway. We can live and love most fully when we practice acceptance, fluidity, and non-grasping. When we catch and release each moment.

So, don’t cling to experiences or emotions. Accept them. Move through them.

And from this place of acceptance, we can appreciate all experiences, pleasant or not. We can be grateful for having them, for the opportunity to learn from them, and for simply being alive. Even pain reminds us of our capacity to feel.

“A friend of ours, when he makes a mistake, says, philosophically, ‘Oh well, AFOG.’ Another F%$!ing Opportunity for Growth.”

—Dossie Easton and Janet Hardy¹⁰

No one does this perfectly. But the great news is, we have our whole lives to practice.

Life keeps moving; our task is simply to move with it.

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I’m deeply grateful to Spencer Carson, who came up with the “movement” analogy and inspired many of the ideas in this post.

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